With the proliferation of the Internet, more and more consumers are purchasing items on-line. Historically, if a consumer wanted to purchase, for example, clothing and auto parts on-line, the consumer either went to one website for the clothing and a different website for the auto parts, or to a single website selling both clothing and auto parts (e.g., www.sears.com). In the latter instance, if the consumer needs a type of clothing (e.g., a tuxedo) which is not available, and auto parts (e.g., tires) that are available, the consumer must still purchase the clothing and the auto parts from different websites.
Websites currently exist (e.g., www.froogle.com and www.mysimon.com) that consolidate catalogs from one or more merchants. However, these websites do not provide an integrated shopping experience since they refer the consumer to another website to purchase a specific item. In other words, these websites transfer the consumer to a different website that sells the particular item(s) the consumer wishes to purchase, so that the consumer may then purchase the item on the transferee website. Returning to the example above, if the consumer wishes to purchase the tuxedo and the tires, the consumer must complete two separate purchases. Thus, for items not sold on a single website, current methods and systems still require the consumer to purchase the items on two separate websites in two separate transactions.
Therefore, systems and methods are needed to enable a host computer providing a consolidated shopping website to order at least one item from at least one different merchant website on behalf of a consumer. Additionally, there is a need for systems and methods to provide compensation to an entity providing a service that allows a consumer to order multiple items sold on multiple websites in a “single transaction” as perceived by the consumer. Further, there is a need to provide advanced searching of products from a plurality of merchants through classification of products and analysis of consumer transactional history and a consumer profile.